A Valediction Forbidding Cover Letters

In which I prepare to demolish a rightfully loathed tradition

Okay, I’ll get straight to the point: Cover letters should never be mandatory. At most, they should be optional. Ideally we would do away with them altogether.

This idea had been fermenting in my head ever since I began applying to Real Jobs/Internships as a college student, but I was finally able to pour it out like a nicely aged wine to a friend who inspired me with her latest cover-letter-induced woes. Said friend—intelligent, accomplished, adventurous, a master of career reinvention and yet unbendingly true to herself—had worked long and hard across at least two continents to sustain a fragmented family and now hovered on the cusp of another transition. It was senseless, I mused, for such a person to be held back by the inherent limitations of a cover letter. And, I realized as I mused, those inherent limitations could fill books far longer than the ones said friend had written.

No one relishes writing cover letters. No one I know, anyway. Not even writers…especially not writers. I see several problems with the process, and I make it a rule never to complain without proposing a solution.

For one thing, the writer is asked to strike a pretty unrealistic balance. You have to “sell” yourself while remaining humble, tout your strengths while not coming across as arrogant. This is a task for anyone, but particularly difficult for women, who are conditioned (often imperceptibly) to downplay themselves and their abilities. I recently asked another woman if she had ever heard the term “haughty” used to describe a man. The fact that she hadn’t says a lot—and of course that’s nowhere near the worst of the words, inside or outside a professional context.

For another thing, a letter cannot replace an oral or otherwise live conversation. I guess what I’m saying is to cut right to the interview and incorporate the questions and details that might otherwise be demanded of a cover letter, because the letter itself does nothing to convey personality. “But the cover letter is where you get to introduce yourself!” Except it really isn’t. The cover letter is where you tell the hiring manager what they want to hear, use all the punchy keywords they scan for. Very little of your own voice is able to shine through; the proliferation of templates even implies a certain prohibition of one’s own voice. (“To the hiring manager: I was [thrilled] to see your opening for a ________…” It’s essentially the antithesis of writing.

For a third thing, some people just don’t have the time. Take a single parent who works several jobs and is looking to advance their career. Their time is precious, and the amount they can spend applying to jobs probably scant. Must they be denied a chance simply because they aren’t at leisure to craft the “perfect” letter?

Now, all this invective does not account for those who rely on writing as their sole or primary means of communication. Employers would need to make provisions for non-speech-enabled candidates. Even so, the changes need not be drastic: the interview could take the form of a live text chat, leaving the candidate at liberty to submit the complex answers required in real time.

Besides, if hiring managers don’t go to the trouble of more than skimming these letters—as the career officers tell us, possibly in a somewhat subversive attempt to compel us to write worthy ones—then why bother at all? That’s what gets me, how little difference the most potentially personal part of the initial application makes in the end. We all know a direct interpersonal interaction is more fulfilling, nerve-racking though it may be at first. As I’ve said before, human beings are social animals—we’re bound to come away from a face-to-face exchange feeling more satisfied, like we’ve imparted aspects of our souls that would be lost in a formulaic letter. (Because we will have.)

Not to mention the many highly qualified job seekers who simply don’t excel at writing, or at fitting their writing into these parameters. I ask you, companies, is a cover letter truly worth “weeding out” the poor writers, thereby sacrificing some promising candidates who might in fact have everything you’re seeking and more? Running the risk of never seeing their souls?

‘Soul’ may seem like a strong word; most jobs don’t exactly put our souls on the line. But if we want to find meaning in our work, we need to be able to express our search for that meaning, and everything that has led us up to this point in our search, in as hospitable an environment as possible. Which, frankly, a cover letter does not provide. And because of all its shortcomings, it creates an obstacle within applications where it should create an opportunity. Job applicants are automatically antipathetic to the idea of having to slog through a cover letter—and the last thing you, the company, really want is to be stirring up antipathy and frustration where before there was at worst neutrality, if not hope.

Don’t kill hope. In an age of impending economic collapse, when we are prevailed upon to rethink the way we conduct professional life, we have the chance to end this hampering practice for good. Join the #NoMoreCoverLetters movement now!

Any Tom, Dick, or Karen; Any Tom, Karen, or Dick

In which I face the facts (i.e., the cold-hearted cynic I am inside)

This title cleverly references not only a number from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, but also the one-time husband of Karen Carpenter, Tom Burris. He serves no other purpose in this post. It came as absolute and very recent news to me that she had ever been married. Who the hell tries to marry Karen Carpenter, anyway? She is a FREE SPIRIT.

*CW: eating disorders*

Okay, kids, I’ve been listening to and reading about the Carpenters quite a bit, and I have to talk to someone about it. And get some things off my chest. Having been raised in an ardently pro-Carpenters household, I just sort of accepted them as inherently ‘good’ and never came to grips (until now) with how, in all honesty, they perplex and frustrate me.

Before I remotely criticize them, I must disclaim that no one can make me feel more guilty for said forthcoming criticism than I make myself feel, on account of the tragedy surrounding Karen. The story of her illness and death upsets me deeply, not least because I’ve known people who struggle with similar disorders and because these disorders still garner much less visibility than they should. (And this is forty years later!) I won’t even go into the fact that it was a careless remark by an early critic which gave her the notion that her appearance was lacking. She deserved so much better. I think the circumstances that killed her were the last and most egregious demonstration of how no one truly listened to her or considered her needs—starting in her childhood when the family up and moved cross-country to help her brother chase fame and fortune. She learned to roll with the punches, to the point of being rolled over by others, and to literally make herself as small as possible. By the time the people who could have done something started to pay attention, she was used to denying that anything was wrong, and it was too late. It’s heartbreaking. And how must it have been for the millions of girls (like my mom) who grew up idolizing this woman, wanting to be her? What must they have taken away from the sequence of events? What damage still reverberates?

All this to say that Karen, with her singing and drumming, is the only part of the whole Carpenters experience that I unequivocally like. That and Richard’s piano, I guess. The layering of voices doesn’t do much for me—in fact, I wish Richard would shut up altogether, because his sister is interpreting. (Aside: she apparently referred to herself as a “drummer who sang.” ExCUSE ME???????)

As for the songs themselves…well, I enjoy about two-thirds of every Carpenters song. There is always some bothersome element to spoil it. (Who does this Cecilia think she is, Lester Bangs?? Hang on, hang on, let me talk.) Take “Hurting Each Other”: beautiful, yes, and pretty immaculate up until the final verse. “Can’t we stop hurting each other?” This is what creative writers call telling instead of showing, the classic rookie mistake. Entirely unnecessary, too, when the rest of the lyric paints a clear picture of a couple who are having a rough go of it. Ending it after the second verse might feel like a premature cutoff, but as is it goes on too long for its own good, diluting its own message.

Or “Rainy Days and Mondays.” They always get you down? Really? How original! Again, the fault lies with the lyricist; convince me that Saturdays depress you and you’ll have my respect, or at the very least my ear. Lovely melody, though, and of course Karen can sell it.

Or “Top of the World.” Actually, there’s very little that’s redeemable about this one. The lyric is out of touch with any kind of reality, and Richard’s arrangement doesn’t help. For the best rendition of this song, see here: it’s got a much-needed harder edge.

(Those of you who haven’t cancelled me, thank you for sticking by, I know I’m making it increasingly difficult.)

Or “Goodbye to Love.” Again, big fan of the verse structure, but not of the coda with the fuzz-guitar solo. Am I the only one who can’t reconcile that bit with the rest of the track? It strikes me as a bizarre departure from the torch-song tone hitherto established. And given that it’s the closing section, you have to work to remember what came before. Not one of your more brilliant moments, Dick.

Or “Superstar.” For God’s sake, girl, your first mistake was getting involved with a guitarist. You must realize what loose cannons that lot have historically been. Going on (and, once more, the blame falls to the songwriters), the first verse is fine and then the second…disintegrates. “Loneliness is such a sad affair.” REALLY. WHO’DA THUNK. After which “again” is rhymed with itself. Twice. Perhaps the lyricist wandered off mid-composition? (They should have recorded the other “Superstar,” from Jesus Christ Superstar. Wouldn’t that have been something?)

Or “Sing.” Here’s the kicker, because, you know what, I kind of really like this song. That statement alone will cost me all my credibility, especially among my kin, but hear me out. It stems largely from a crushing relief at having finally pinpointed it after probably a decade of being plagued by those la-la-la-la-la’s. I withered away, wondering “what is this melody??” until chancing upon it one day with the identifying information I sought. Also, I do love the horns—undeniably great orchestration. I know full well it’s dumb, but you gotta be dumb now and then, right?

Insert jibe about my being dumb all the time. Moving on.

I don’t quibble with “It’s Going to Take Some Time.” Solid song, solidly arranged. Not that I should be surprised, as I just found out Carole King wrote it. Ooh, and I am fond of “For All We Know”; I sang it in high school choir, the performance of which was unexpectedly heartfelt (remind me to tell you that story later). Both far from the most saccharine offenders.

Speaking of saccharine, “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” Huh. I wish I could remember the person who said that every Burt Bacharach melody sounds like the second oboe part. You need only hear this one to understand the accuracy of that evaluation. I’m no devotee of Bacharach either—but that’s another post.

Anyway, you get the gist. I tend toward the belief (as my dad does with Queen—by the way, happy birthday to Freddie!) that they were too good for most of the material they recorded. From my outside perspective, their repertoire reflected and enabled their general infantilization, which seems an insult to their musicianship. I have no idea where their artistic vision ended and the press coverage began; even so, these two were objectively not allowed to grow up, and it infuriates me particularly that Karen was kept in a schoolgirl box. It could have been the whole sibling-duo thing, I suppose, but this ultra-conservative, sexless image wasn’t doing them any favors. Can you imagine if that sultry contralto voice had had some even slightly suggestive material to sing? Something along the lines of “Big Spender,” for example? Every warm-blooded man in America would have exploded. And we women could’ve used that.

But the ‘70s were before my time. Maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe I’m way off the mark.

Now, to end on a constructive note after alienating my entire readership, a sampling of tunes they (and specifically Karen) could easily have recorded:

  • “It’s Lonely at the Top” (writer: Randy Newman)
  • “The Girl from Ipanema” (writers: Tom Jobim/Vinícius de Moraes/Norman Gimbel; they actually did record an instrumental take back in their Richard Carpenter Trio days, and what a missed opportunity that they didn’t feature Karen on a vocal)
  • “Time of the Season” (writer: Rod Argent; let’s hear their twist on some British Invasion artists and not just the Beatles!)
  • “Something” (writer: George Harrison; okay, you want the Beatles, here’s a Beatles track for you—though I can’t knock their take on “Ticket to Ride”)
  • An album of Great American Songbook standards (I’m talking Berlin’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance,” Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” the Gershwins’ “A Foggy Day”…)
  • “Video Killed the Radio Star” (writers: Trevor Horn/Geoff Downes/Bruce Woolley; think about it, this is basically a Carpenters song already, and it’s a quality song! Have you listened to it? I’ll grant it its own post someday)

and, an anachronistic addition,

  • “Pompeii” (writer: Dan Smith; those drums—Karen could’ve gone ham!)

When Richard ultimately joins his sister up there, I hope it’s him at a grand piano and her alternating between a microphone and a drum kit, playing an acoustic gig for all eternity. I’ll be sure to tune in on the scratchy transistor radio they give me at the gates of hell.

Image: you probably have seen this one, and I cannot find the source, so just take my word that I was not present for this photograph

Why Is Love So Hard?

In which I indulge in a little armchair psychology

Distinct non-philosopher that I am, I’ve lately had occasion to dwell on the idea of love and why that idea often differs so drastically from the reality. (Nothing in particular has happened; in fact it’s what hasn’t happened that constitutes, as a friend of mine so succinctly put it, “the bummer.”) To that effect, this week’s thoughts will center not on the stuff of art or culture themselves, as is typical here, but on one of the classic forces which inspire us to pursue and enjoy all that stuff.

Human beings are social animals. We came to collective consciousness by connecting with one another and then secured our survival by banding together. For most of our existence, everyone has been a necessity to everyone else. So it kind of boggles my mind that we have such trouble admitting that necessity. Surely there is no need to resign ourselves to loneliness. Since we’re so vulnerable anyway by physical standards, why can’t we open ourselves up to emotional vulnerability and communicate our wants and needs to our loved ones?

I mean vulnerability in all its forms. Asking for help. Being honest about our feelings. Even—and this one is, I think, severely underrepresented—making it clear that there is an absence of feeling, or that something is happening that we aren’t comfortable with or don’t want. Or, in less extreme circumstances, expressing a desire just to be left alone for a while.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m struggling to remember the last time I was able to communicate any of these things to the people I really needed to communicate them to. As that guy says in that movie, “What we have here is failure to communicate.” Regrettably, failure of this sort often costs us our friendships, romances, families, business partnerships, and so on. Unhealthy or nonexistent communication around a Big Issue can mean the instant end of said relationship; but you’d be surprised how quickly breakdowns around seemingly trivial things can accumulate until some small mishap becomes the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Actually, you probably wouldn’t be surprised, because you’ve almost certainly experienced some iteration of that firsthand.

It seems to me that at the heart of all this botched communication is good old-fashioned discomfort. We don’t want to say things that may hurt others, and we don’t want to face the facts that may hurt us. But what has been hammered through my head time and time again (and I suspect I’m not alone) is that not communicating hurts everyone more in the long run. I once had a friendship breakup in which we discovered that we had each been withholding things from the other and thus growing to resent each other more and more, to the point that the cons outweighed the pros of staying friends. It really devastated me, and one of the hardest parts to accept and move on from was that it could have been prevented if we had addressed it sooner. By the same token, I had another friend who called me up one evening and said, “You know, you’ve been kind of a bitch this week.” She didn’t technically have to say it—I knew full well—but I was not yet mature enough to know how to talk to her about it, and she in her trademark forthrightness took it upon herself to pick up the slack. Her willingness to put it out in the open enabled me to make amends and be more mindful of her needs going forward. So, you see, she really did have to say it. However unpleasant you fear the conflict is going to be, the unpleasantness will accrue interest the longer you delay. And the chances are, in the moment, that it will not be nearly as bad as you fear: as a matter of fact, you might feel altogether relieved to have the chance to work through a problem with someone who is important to you. Communication demonstrates importance.

On that point, if someone with whom you try to communicate doesn’t invest reciprocally, it invites you to wonder whether you are indeed of any consequence to them. This is its own brand of pain. I had one such experience recently, which is sort of what got me pondering love and communication in a larger sense. Why do we bother with people who, if we truly unflinchingly read the signs, for one reason or another are not bothering with us? Why do we hang ourselves up on a vision of connection—platonic, romantic, the list goes on—which has no apparent hope of coming to fruition? It’s so easy to waste time this way. And certain genres of film and literature only exacerbate these symptoms, painting the long-suffering unrequited lover as noble and ideal and worthy (in fact expected) to be rewarded. If we as a species hope to acquire any permanent proficiency at communication in relationships, we must divest ourselves of this damaging mentality. Still, in the immediate aftermath—in the eye of the bummer—we need to sit with our feelings and, if possible, lean on those good solid people whose care and company we can rely on. That’s what I am doing, and it goes a long way toward restoring my faith in balanced, healthy love.

Then, of course, there are the situations which turn toxic. Here, communication levels up from important to crucial. I’ve come to discover that there are few things I hate more than the silent treatment. At long-ago low points I would try it, and I would never last. I prefer a shouting match. I prefer slamming doors. I even prefer, if the opposing parties aren’t in the same physical place, a wall of text. Any of these methods expunges the emotion in the heat of the moment, clears people’s heads, and provides the possibility of a reasonable conversation after the fact. Clamping up just about guarantees the misery of everyone involved plus the people adjacent to them. I’ve witnessed it: the erosion takes years to repair at best. Perhaps that’s why I find myself unable to do it, and why I’ve sometimes found myself speaking hastily. I might regret saying something, but I always regret leaving something unsaid.

(This is not to say that some relationships do not deserve termination. Abuse or manipulation are not to be tolerated if at all possible, and people experience emotional trauma every day either by cutting off people who are unable or unwilling to fulfill the supportive, loving roles they are meant to fulfill, or by staying in inhospitable or dangerous relationships for lack of somewhere else to turn. These are emergencies which demand continued combative effort from institutions and systems, though we as individuals can and should educate ourselves on them.)

I mean, when you think of it, what are most love songs about? The things people do, don’t do, say, and don’t say to/with/about each other. Communication is the very foundation of love and relationships. It’s a bitter human truth that the thing which is most essential to a full life is also extraordinarily precarious and fallible.

I guess what I’m saying is…talk to people. Listen to them, too. Love is damn impossible, as is the rest of life. Try to be understanding, and try to be there for someone who needs someone. In the final analysis, all of us need all of us.

Warren Beatty Reacts to “You’re So Vain” (A McSweeney’s Castoff)

In which I house a homeless monologue

Here follows a piece which was rejected by not one but TWO online humor mags, one being the illustrious McSweeney’s Internet Tendency of Boston. Given the double distinction, I felt it merited self-publication. It is, I think, no meaner than the song.

•

It was a yacht party, Carly. Not sure what you expected of me. I was trying to make a good impression, which frankly was none of your concern given that we’d broken up a while ago. So maybe I erred on the excessive side. You know, we can’t all grow up in high society, flirting our way through those kinds of shindigs every other weekend. And what does it say about you that I worked my way into a class that you were born into and I’m more famous? Huh? You want to fix me with your judgment funnel, fine. I’ll funnel you right back. And not in a sexual way this time.

I mean, I didn’t know you were going to be there. And if you’re suffering from any delusion that I cared, well, you can get your head out of the clouds in your coffee right now. Believe it or not, there were other important people in my life while we were together, and since then all of those people have been bumped a spot higher on my list of priorities. I commend you for punching up, but I do not need that kind of negativity clouding my aura.

You seriously think just because you fit your side of the story into a catchy little pop song and enlisted your new BFF Mick Jagger to help you melodically bash me that I’m suddenly going to regret the choices I made? Well, you thought wrong. Also, that album cover looks like the paparazzi caught you coming out of a Wegman’s.

Oh, and as to what I was wearing: the scarf was a gift from my good friend Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew, right before he faked his own death so he could resurface later under a different name and make movies about stealing historic American documents. And the hat was an antique! It wasn’t even supposed to dip below one eye; that’s just the way it fell! Attributing all that to strategy—honestly, you give me too much credit. I had to keep checking the mirror to make sure I could see well enough not to fall flat on my face in the middle of the dance floor and endanger everyone in the vicinity. My head is smaller than you’d have it be, in multiple senses.

Hmph. Probably think this song is about me. Don’t insult my intelligence. It could only have been about me. That isn’t vanity, it’s a basic familiarity with my own life. If anything, you’re the vain one for belaboring the point long after the relationship ended. Move on, lady. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a communist movie to write, direct, and star in.

Image: No Secrets (1973), the album containing literally the biggest secret

Album Review: SONGS OF INNOCENCE

In which I celebrate an uncelebrated curio

Surprise!

You thought you’d left this album in the dust, huh?

Apple product users will remember it as the one that automatically streamed when U2 released it nearly six years ago. As an involuntary addition to millions of music libraries, it was largely unwelcome; people griped about deleting it and generally didn’t give it a chance. The physical release a month later moved only 101,000 units.

I kept it. I figured a U2 album must be at least okay, even if I wasn’t a die-hard fan and didn’t listen right away. Instead I absorbed it bit by bit over the course of years, returning every now and again out of a semi-conscious desire to know it better. All the signposts of my ‘getting into’ an album were present: the instant hook (“Volcano”) followed by a gradual incorporation of the other tracks. Then on Twitter this week, I mentioned the long gestation of my relationship to the record, which was met with a request for a review.

So here I am, giving an album that is not new the mulling-over it deserves…the mullin’-over…the Larry Mullen-over…

My instinct was to associate the title with Songs of Innocence and Experience (the 1789 poetry collection by that guy William Blake), an instinct supported by the Innocence + Experience Tour in 2015 and the could-have-been-predicted follow-up album Songs of Experience in 2017. I’ve always liked Blake, so I appreciated the reference, not least because I understood it, which was already more than I usually got from this band.

Understanding has long been my problem when it comes to U2. It’s not that I don’t think they make good music or even that I don’t like it; I just have yet to figure out what any song is about. They’re all kind of about religion and kind of about Ireland and kind of about existence…I admire Bono for refusing to be boxed in by conventions of concrete language, but at what cost?

In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m a lyrics person, so if I can’t engage with a lyric I need to do some work to make a connection. Now, given how U2 excel at instrumentation and arrangement, I’m often distracted from the lyric I’m unsuccessfully trying to parse apart by the ambient sound. A sound I feel like I can fall into and it will wrap itself around me. You know, ambient.

And this record brims with ambience. Each song has a groove that invites you to slip in before you realize it. You are, as “Every Breaking Wave” puts it, “helpless against the tide”—in fact, marine themes (ocean, beach, sand) pervade the whole, creating an undertow in which you can’t help but be dragged along. Additionally, the orchestration and sequencing give the impression of an ebb and flow; instances of building (vocally/instrumentally/both) and of sudden release, exploding into revelation. We listeners may be drowning and we would never know.

These factors—combined with the lyrical through-line of giving in and giving up, bowing to the nonsense and the madness—ironically produce one of the most integrated and linear statements I’ve heard from U2. Here are the highlights.

Favorite track: “Volcano”

As I mentioned, this was my point of entry: friendly, accessible, a straight-up rock & roll song all the way up to the affirmation “you are rock & roll” in the bridge. The deep, propulsive bass line seized me from the beginning; the guitar, especially at the chorus, is brash and joyous in the dissonance it causes against the bass and vocal melody; the drums are heavy on the two and four. It’s danceable, helped along by the rhythm of the lyrics—a bit of a throwback to “Vertigo,” now I think of it. Coming at the album’s midpoint, this track is the axis upon which it revolves, and it’s bold and fun enough to shoulder that responsibility. I also just love the line (as linguistic and musical phrase) “Do you live here or is this a vacation?”

Favorite line: You’re breaking into my imagination / Whatever’s in there is yours to take. : “Song for Someone”

On an album full of ear-catching lyrics, of which this song boasts several—reminiscent of the Smiths, if only for the repeating plea not to let the light go out—this is the jewel. Part of the beauty of these moments is their brutality, their jagged edges, the violence bound up in them. Bono often draws subject matter out of the ugliness he has witnessed in his environment (the album closes with a number called “The Troubles”). In this case the aggression of the image is juxtaposed against a jarringly gentle delivery: the narrator adopts a stance of passivity, making no effort to resist even the invasion of his own mind.

Favorite chord progression: “California (There Is No End to Love)”

You know what a sucker I am. This is another high-energy track, with a driving, tripping drum line and lots of power chords. The “Ba-Ba-Barbara, Santa Barbara” intro is a nice tip of the hat; here ends any indication of the Wilsonian influence, though the overall effect is strangely similar—a sunny, breezy mix, the sonic equivalent of racing up the PCH. A listener’s interest is held by the equal-parts-major-and-minor chordal structure, the way the latter half of each verse differs just slightly from the former half, and the same with the refrain. I forgot how much I liked this song until I returned to it.

Other moments worth listening for:

  • The chant-like chorus of “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now”
  • The melody, like a divine inspiration, of “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight”
  • The mile-a-minute image effect of “Raised by Wolves”
  • The central line of “Iris (Hold Me Close),” rising like…something out of the ether (not sure of the exact expression, but you know what I mean)
  • The moment you stop trying to determine what “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)” has to do with Joey Ramone
  • Basically everything, because Bono really lives up to his namesake phrase at fifty-four

Belated as this meditation may be, someone had to do it; the album has been detrimentally overshadowed by a perhaps ill-advised marketing strategy. I don’t believe it deserves to bear that mark forever. On the other hand, barreling into our lives the way it did might have been an attempt to honor its lyrics and teach us the value of surrender. To paraphrase “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now,” complete surrender must be the only weapon we know.

Image: cover of the Island/Interscope Records release, 9 September 2014

A Love Letter to José Carioca, Rio de Janeiro

In which the past catches up with me

My dear Joe,

We met at least twenty years ago, so I’ve always considered you a friend, but it’s different now. Aside from the standard byproduct of aging that causes one to see the hallmarks of childhood in a new light and with a new appreciation, I happen to have spent much of this year cornered in my apartment by the impossibility and/or fear of travel, calling on the far reaches of the internet to transport me to those childhood haunts. See, we have these things called streaming services and—oh, but all this means nothing to you in early-1940s Brazil. The point is it led me back to you.

And boy, am I glad. You haven’t changed a whit, you’ve only shown me how I have. The diligent animators paint you to life in the final few minutes of Saludos Amigos, and Donald Duck encounters you and wonders who you are and what’s going on in his barely-intelligible manner, and it takes me about ninety seconds of screen time to fall head over tail feathers in love with you. Your pronunciation of your own name and hometown, by way of introduction, is possibly the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard. (I was disarmed. I had to rewind.) And you puff up a little with pride as you do so, but it’s still modest? A modest pride? I don’t know. Evidently all my powers of language fail where you’re concerned. Anyway, then you realize this hapless duck you’re talking to is a movie star, whose work is familiar to you,* and you exclaim, “O Pato Donald? O Pato Donald!” and go off in rapid overexcited Portuguese, and by the time you start strumming your umbrella like a cavaquinho** I’ve lost track of where I am. What’s more, you’re tenacious: you manage to sustain a friendship with said hapless duck, carried over into The Three Caballeros, in which you spend an even longer stretch of time with him and somehow hang onto your patience despite his endless questioning and skirt-chasing. I mean, we all knew Donald was obnoxious, but he comes off almost irredeemably so beside such a gentleman as yourself. You, sir, can handle your cachaça. But then, if you can’t be a healthy influence on him, who can?

Honestly, you should see the look on my face as I write.

Even just laying eyes on you overwhelmed me with what you call saudade. A very romantic nostalgia indeed. You are the best-dressed bird I know, more debonair than you’ve any right to be in that hat and bowtie, and if I were ever to smoke a cigar it would be because you make it look effortlessly cool (I do have perfectly cool human friends who smoke cigars, but none has been sufficient to persuade me). I love how whatever you touch becomes a musical instrument, most often your umbrella (proof that the best characters carry umbrellas—see also: Mary Poppins, Jiminy Cricket), and how the art of duplicating and harmonizing with oneself is apparently second nature to you. All handy talents when paired with an impeccable taste in music. I love your natural and shameless bilingualism, which sets you apart both in and beyond Disney. You switch like it’s nothing, you normalized it before normalizing things was a trend. I love how taken with Bahia you are: your perspective of it left an impression on me back before my brain was developed enough to grasp the concept of place. Speaking of, I love that you live in an actual location which I could conceivably visit (someday). The Disney universe is full of lovely fake kingdoms. Thank you for giving me a lovely real one.

Also, that one-eyed thing you do. Irresistible.

I love that you’ve seen stuff, you know? You’re not some innocent. You’ve been around the block; you’ve learned where to be and when to be there. You have no reason not to be sure of yourself, and so you are.

I may love your sense of adventure the most, your knack for sweeping us up into shenanigans while we’re none the wiser. Any man who can do that is a keeper in my book. If that man is a charming, well-spoken, properly stylish parrot, so much the better.

Wait, though, it might be your dancing that I love most. Do you understand my dilemma? Ugh. I’d just pick you up and squeeze you if I could.

I’ve since been blessed with real-life friends who reflect a more detailed and practical—and admittedly up-to-date—picture of the culture you described to me. I’ve also had the good fortune to experience more of the world at large. But please take my gratitude for guiding me early on, for planting the seed so long ago. And if you want to take my heart, too, well, why not. You’ve earned it.

Beijos,

Cecilia

*Audience aside: I love an in-universe reference. Characters recognizing each other from elsewhere in the canon is something I am a fan of.

**Portugal’s answer to the ukulele, important to me for personal reasons.

Image: Really, people, how can you NOT?

How *Am* I?

In which I do not seriously ask that question, thank God

Language is weird.

My relationship to language learning has always been marked both by eagerness and a measure of trepidation, an uncertainty born of having to consciously try. I grew up in a monolingual household—it’s been at least two generations since either side of my family was truly bilingual—and have attained varying levels of proficiency in other languages through concentrated study, largely academic.

Mingling in Berlin’s international community, I am often presumed to be Italian, as in hailing direct from Italy rather than via two generations of assimilation statunitense. I am confronted by identity dysphoria every time I speak that language: although I consider myself fluent, I can’t claim to be the native speaker my name might suggest, and even a moment’s hesitation in composing a thought or sentence aloud reminds me that I acquired Italian over nearly a decade of coursework. (Before that, at the still relatively old age of eleven, I studied Mandarin, of which I’ve retained a few things that have carried me further than you might guess.) So as I continue my study of languages I know and would like to know, there is a constant current of doubt just below the surface, doubt in my own ability to master the mechanics of whatever it is I am speaking or writing or reading or understanding.

Now, I do love the thrill of the chase, and I do have some natural intuition for pronunciation. This, then, is the devil’s pact I’ve made: a certain facility for picking up the tics and tricks that make a language what it is, paid for with a certain lack of self-assurance which comes and goes in waves. Hey, if I can build wonderful, unique, improbable, fruitful friendships with people all over the world, I can handle a little discomfort.

Besides, it yields a lot to think about, and not only because my current place of residence is requiring major linguistic adjustments. One advantage to Italian—besides its obvious bellezza—is the door it unlocks to its sister languages, whose differences are often just subtle enough to trip you up. I get an extra satisfaction from a lesson in Portuguese or French because I feel I’ve leveled up, made progress toward cracking the code that separates one Latin derivative from another. Lately, in fact, I’ve spent at least as much time thinking about Romance languages as I have about the definitely non-Romance language I am tackling for more immediate purposes. But all the secondary languages I’ve immersed myself in have left me puzzling over one key phrase in my mother tongue:

How are you?

Let’s put aside what a difficult question this is to begin with and look at the phrase itself. How are you? It’s a knee-jerk component of meeting and greeting in the English-speaking world, something that leaves people’s mouths automatically, almost perfunctorily. Most tellingly, it is not the Come vai/va? of Italian or the Wie geht’s? of German. It is not How is it going?—we say that too, if not as readily. It is a personal question, and carries a sense of permanence, unlike in these other languages which acknowledge temporality and transience. It becomes a more difficult question than it need be because it connotes a state not of short-term faring, but of long-term being.

Of course, in Italian (for example) there is also Come stai?, which, transliterated, would be How do you stay? This is less common than How do you/does it go?, but even so it suggests the temporary. The verb stare deals in temporary matters, existing in one place or situation on the way to another. You may express feelings of irritation or weariness or stress—heck, contentedness or excitement or peace—and simultaneously communicate, with your choice of verb, that these are only of the moment. For states of permanent being, there is another verb–essere–which allows me to say Sono una ragazza (I am a girl) or Sono un’americana (gotcha, Deutschland!).

Meanwhile, when one says in English that they are tired, there is no linguistic distinction between this and the fact that they are thirty years old. In fact, this highlights the Romance family’s further accounting for all sorts of states: Italian uses avere (to have) to discuss age, as in Tu hai trent’anni. In English the one verb covers everything. For all a non-native speaker knows, those states of being we know to be temporary could last forever, because there is no verbal signal otherwise. To my knowledge, the only way to remain thirty years old forever is to drink from the magical spring in Tuck Everlasting, and the only way to remain tired forever is…to live in the year 2020. *laughs weakly*

All this to say that the more intelligence I gather about the differences in language structures, the less I envy ESL students. I reckon almost no language is a steeper uphill battle. Gallivanting about, proclaiming ourselves to be this or that…it’s inaccurate and probably arrogant to act so declarative. We could stand to take a leaf out of the Romance and/or Germanic Bücher. Come to think of it, the phrase we English-speakers should bring back is How do you do? Not only does it at least allude to a more temporary phase of life, it’s classy as hell.

Image: from Broad City S2E8

Singular Sensation

In which Broadway’s Broadwayest musical turns 45

There’s no shortage of subjects I could chase this week. The album Taylor Swift surprised us with that no one was emotionally ready for. The utter circus my expat life is becoming as I wait on important answers from oversaturated offices. The fact that I’m using my limited access to Disney+ to keep rewatching The Three Caballeros. But there is one thing that really demands to be discussed today, which I’ve done enough long-term planning to feel able to speak to even in my addled state.

I can pull myself together long enough to say that on this day forty-five years ago, Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban’s A Chorus Line, conceived and directed by Michael Bennett, had its Broadway premiere at the Shubert Theatre. Following that, it ran for 6,136 performances and has since sparked a film, multiple revivals, and an enduring widespread respect for the sheer electrifying power of choreography. It’s a show about theatre geeks, by theatre geeks, for theatre geeks—and, as with movies about Hollywood, those babies sell themselves.

It’s a masterpiece of personal story, a tapestry of the life arcs of its characters, founded on a series of interviews with real Broadway chorus members, eight of whom went on to join the original cast. I believe it was the actress who inspired the character of Connie (known for the trouble with being “four foot ten”) who said that if she didn’t get the show she had just auditioned for, she would have so little money left that she would be evicted from her apartment. And although my stakes have thus far mostly been lower than that, I thought it would make sense to examine this show in terms personal to me.

As usual, it started in the car with my dad. Much of my musical education took place there. I absorbed Randy Newman’s “Four Eyes,” They Might Be Giants’ Flood, literally all of the Mamas & the Papas. You’d be amazed at the impact a daily drive of fifteen minutes to and from school can have over a run of years.

I was about ten when, en route home one day, he flicked through a series of tracks and said, “Now, I can’t play this with your sister around because it’s got a swear word in it.” In hindsight I doubt my younger sister would have cared, or even noticed; that’s how it was for me, my interest in certain lyrics induced by the grownups’ aversion to them and attempts to shield me from them. (Don’t overthink it, grownups!) Anyway, he pressed play on the story of a woman’s struggle in an acting class whose toxic environment constantly made her feel as if she were…nothing. I had experienced similar feelings among my peers at school, and I was cheered to hear about people with theatrical aspirations like mine.

The line that uneased my dad came at the end of the first verse of the song proper:

They all felt something

But I felt nothing

Except the feeling that this bullshit was absurd

That admittedly made me sit up straighter. The two show credits to my name were rather wholesome: a school production of The King & I (as Anna) and a children’s-theatre production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (as one of three narrators). I had the bug, but I knew I also had a long way to go. Maybe someday I would get to—or be brave enough to—sing a line like this.

Cut to May 2017, when a friend who had played Jack to my Cinderella in a local production of Into the Woods tipped me off to an audition for a nearby community theatre’s summer staging of A Chorus Line. This was it! A shot at the show whose peculiar lines I’d been spouting haphazardly since that day in the car. So many lines.

“If Troy Donahue could be a movie star, then I could be a movie star.”

“Little brat. That’s what my sister was. A little brat. And that’s why I shaved her head. I’m glad I shaved her head.”

and the existential

“Tits! When am I gonna grow tits?” (As of eighth grade, that had turned out not to be a concern.)

I hadn’t had a real-life frame of reference for the majority of these observations as I was memorizing them. I thought they were funny, even if some of the jokes went over my head. But they had accompanied me through an adolescence as tumultuous as any the characters mentioned in “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love,” and through college where I felt misunderstood all over again in different ways, and now at nearly twenty-two I considered myself slightly more in the know. I had something of a sense of what was going on in this thing called the adult world. At the very least I understood the jokes. Not going for it would be doing myself a disservice.

I had always been a strong dancer, if rarely the strongest in the room. But even if it hadn’t been a while since I’d danced in a formal context, this audition would have challenged me like none other. I was nowhere near the strongest; I may have been among the weakest of the girls (don’t get me started on gendered double standards). And once I was cast as a dancer who is cut after the famously taxing opening number—and as the understudy for Val, of “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three” notoriety—the challenges only continued. Wonderful challenges, to be sure, especially where the choreography was concerned. It occurred to me that I had spent so long turning over every aural detail of that original soundtrack that I had a loose concept at best of the visual mechanics of the show (well, except for the spangled finale ensemble, which I was quite excited to put on). So watching it come to life, and physically taking part in it, was a unique and invigorating experience. As I mastered and perfected that opening routine, I felt I was leaving the best of myself out there with it. I was digging right down to the bottom of my soul to see what I had inside. Not forgetting the chance I had to directly engage with my beloved libretto: I even got to sing “I really need this job / Please, God, I need this job / I’ve got to get this job.” My whole heart was in those three lines too.

The book (or script), which I had never heard, struck and moved me over and over again as rehearsals went on. I wasn’t sure how faithful the stories were to the lives they represented, but some were truly heartrending. Paul’s recollection of finding a home away from home. Cassie’s plea to be rescued from a washed-up Hollywood career. These characters want to be important, want to reach someone, if only one person—the director. The setting is iconic in its sparseness, a bare stage and a mirror, giving the impression of a liminal space where anyone can have a voice and take up the space they deserve, even if they won’t all be rewarded for it. As we polished and then performed our production, it seemed we were getting at some essence of life, imperfect and often disappointing and ultimately fleeting though it might be.

Never have I been more insecure onstage than when I was doing A Chorus Line. And my instances of onstage insecurity are few and far between. Even given my familiarity with the score, I was faced with constant effort and constant failure at a hitherto-unknown rate. If ever the opportunity presents itself, I’ll gladly do it again. If not, I’m grateful to have had this show, witty and fretful and heartfelt, to guide me through my life up to this point and eager to track my evolving relationship to it going forward. As befits my music-nerd persona, I’ve also had tremendous fun hunting down cut tunes like this one. Good old Hamlisch will never let me down.

One of the things I appreciate most about A Chorus Line at the end of the day is its balance of escapism and realism. It allows both performers and spectators to entertain the fantasy of working in show business while even more potently pointing out the trials of the industry and the varied barriers that can spring up in the path of anyone who dares to try to live out that fantasy. Realizing art by this method is a special sort of pain, and a special sort of joy. These personalities, these songs, and these images inhabit the pain and the joy better than just about any show I know. Almost half a century on, it’s the one.

Images: from the 1975 production

Washington Irving, Berlin

In which I ruminate on an eerie visitation and the man behind it

Excuse me while I congratulate myself on that terribly clever title. A writer I love overlapping a composer I love overlapping a city I love which happens to be where I live? Oh, Cecilia, you crack-up. *pats own back*

Just kidding. (Sort of.) If I refine half the charm and wit of the inimitable Washington Irving, I can die a happy woman. Or maybe, if I’m lucky, I can be spirited away a happy woman. Who knows?

Anyway. The point being that something happened to me last week. One night, unbidden and unprovoked, I vividly dreamt the events of Irving’s famous short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” An entirely unoriginal dream—it struck me odd that it should occupy the space where my plenty active imagination usually makes up its own stuff. But it prompted me to give it (and some of his other stories) a reread, and remember how much I liked his narrative voice, and…feel quite unnerved the more I dwelt on it. A tale of a Connecticut native who is an interloper in a strange community, distinguished for both knowing/teaching things and singing, and who rather takes pride in being erudite, trying to insert himself where he doesn’t belong? Subsequently run out of town by a sly opponent who knows just how to manipulate his fears and weaknesses? Whyever should that make me nervous?

(Put another way: the only thing separating me from Ichabod Crane is about a foot and a half in height. And while I do fancy myself the well-intentioned heroine of my own story, I am forced to reconsider this self-perception when I question whether Ichabod is a hero—a protagonist, yes, but his intentions aren’t necessarily pure, and not only because he keeps comparing women to food. Whatever. Let’s just say I haven’t gone out at night lately.)

But it’s more than that. It’s the fact that this particular vision should visit me on the two hundredth anniversary, just about to the month, of the story’s publication. 1820. Compounded by the fact that I too am a writer who is getting more ambitious with her fiction…who has in fact described a character as a “scarecrow escaped from a corn maze,” incidentally evoking Irving’s description of Ichabod as a “scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.” Am I being possessed? Have I been SINGLED OUT?

But I’m being silly. It’s all coincidence. No reason to suspect a larger force at work. No need to be superstitious. Right?

Come to think of it, I wouldn’t put it past this author fellow. Playing tricks on people from beyond the grave? Typical.

Irving (1783-1859) was a Manhattan native and a real city kid, at least for a while. His father (also a Scotsman) and mother (an Englishwoman) named him after the general, who had just been inaugurated as President when he met and gave a blessing to six-year-old Irving. Like many people of eventual renown, Irving was no star student, but that was okay by him because he preferred going to the theatre anyway. Remember how you and your fellow truants would hop down to the playhouse to snag tickets to the latest comedy with your own money when you were thirteen? Man, those were the days.

He was first published at age nineteen under the pen name “Jonathan Oldstyle” with a series of humorous social observations in the New York Morning Chronicle, whose co-founder was none other than…Aaron Burr, sir! Besides having commendable taste, Burr apparently overlooked the young writer’s Federalist leanings—tying him to Burr’s frenemy A-dot-Ham—enough to forward clippings to his dear daughter Theodosia. (Irving and Theodosia Burr were born a matter of months apart; my cherished alternate history is that that they fell madly in love, married, and had a giant family, and Theodosia never boarded the ship that was lost at sea. Why let the truth get in the way?)

From there he did what it seems like all men of means did at the time: study law and pass the bar (by the skin of his teeth, mind you). But he had also taken up the infinitely more engaging practice of fiction writing; and why bother with a legal career when he could mess with his growing readership by inventing a character, treating him as real, and developing his personality to the point that he all but crossed the veil? Not to mention he had caught the travel bug, touring Europe, veering from the beaten path, honing a uniquely savvy and conversational persona which put him in demand among the courts of society. Irving’s priorities were cemented, however, on a journey closer to home: up through the Hudson River Valley, where the communities—Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, etc.—brimmed with old folktales and ghost stories, the stuff of a writer’s dreams, just begging his transcription.

And transcribe he did…but not before fleeing the country again. Well, ‘fleeing’ in the sense that the War of 1812 impoverished his family and he went to stay with his sister and brother-in-law in England. (Birmingham, to be precise, best known for these lads.) It was here of all places that, a decade after Knickerbockering his hometown into his own personal fandom, he crafted The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. A great name befitting a great collection: it featured both “Rip Van Winkle” (whose action takes place overnight—well, not exactly, but that’s the point of the story—and which Irving wrote overnight) and “Sleepy Hollow.” His New York publisher would release it in seven installments, the last of which would appear in mid-1820. Meanwhile, the collection would leak in London due to lax international copyright laws, prompting Irving to consult his friend Walter Scott’s publisher, who took on the collection in two installments as well as the British rights to all of Irving’s subsequent works. Much of our modern copyright legislation is thanks to Irving.

I wonder if Geoffrey Crayon is considered an ancestor of the Purple Crayon of “Harold” fame. As usual, I digress.

The Sketch Book made Irving more popular than ever. He rode its coattails, gallivanting between continents (he was more of a Dresden guy than a Berlin guy, for which I will not judge him), attempting to woo some ladies (eighteen-year-old Emily Foster, whom he pursued indefatigably despite what should have been a major takeaway from one of his own stories) and inexplicably ignoring others (among his admirers was the Mary Shelley! If only he had appreciated what a power couple they would have made!). But bachelorhood served him in the end: it freed him up to dash off travel essays, assist the American minister in London in negotiating a trade deal with the British West Indies, and serve as Minister to Spain under President John Tyler. Couldn’t tie this one down, no sir!

Upon his long-anticipated return to the United States, he somehow found the energy to complete a multi-volume biography of his beloved namesake, which required several trips between his Tarrytown estate Sunnyside and Mount Vernon. In retrospect, this appears a fair use of that remaining energy, because he died less than a year after finishing the final volume, aged seventy-six and ensconced at Sunnyside. He was mourned and revered by friends, contemporaries, and imitators like Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville (the critical-but-probably-just-jealous Edgar Allan Poe was already dead). Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, unofficial keeper of collective memory, didn’t let the funeral go by without a proper elegy.

That Irving became the first true American Man of Letters without a full-length novel to his name is, in my opinion, the biggest flex in the New World. This man carved a permanent niche in the public imagination on essentially a series of short stories alone. Okay, and an unmatched talent for naming things. And a dynamic personality. He has been somewhat eclipsed by Mark Twain, his successor in American documentation and humor; but it was his trailblazing which gave Twain that forum to begin with. He proved that a person could write for a living, the echoes of which plague today’s university creative-writing programs. He seems not to have done anything outright cancel-worthy, or at least not to be guilty of individual vices so much as societal ones. He understood, in life and in work, the necessity of an elaborate prank. Most importantly, he helped secure a young nation’s place on the world literary stage and spread the word that its artists had something meaningful to contribute.

And now, a nice round two centuries after the story I led with, he haunts my dreams and/or waking thoughts. Oh well. I suppose I could do worse. Now, if you’ll excuse me once again, I am going to go eat a Katrina Van Tassel, aka a peach.

Image: watercolor by George Bernard Butler, Jr., commissioned by Irving to commemorate the time he got #blessed by the Prez

A Moment Alone in the Shade

In which I contemplate a pilgrim’s progress

I would bet a ten-dollar-Founding-Father bill that you expected my title to refer in some way to the room where it happens. Well, kids, I’m full of surprises. Besides, there is no longer one ‘room’: everyone who has witnessed the production of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton available on Disney+ has created a happening in their own room. Funny the concepts that break down under quarantine restrictions.

I compare the experience—my experience, anyway—to a pilgrim’s progress in that it represents a milestone on my journey from getting to know the soundtrack to finally witnessing the show live onstage in the flesh. When that last will happen, at this point, I can’t even guess. But this glimpse into the mechanics of the show, the staging and the emphasis and of course the dynamic performances from the very cast members I’d heard on the soundtrack, goes a long way. Even if, until that in-the-flesh moment, I will never be satisfied. (Boom!)

One of the fascinating things about the sensation that is this show is that my situation represents most people’s: that of being financially (or otherwise) unable to attend a performance and thus bonding with fellow soundtrack devotees. We can sing it by heart, we know every drum triplet and handclap and syllable uttered by Lafayette/Jefferson, but beyond that we have only the odd bit of fan footage or official production still to go on for a visual reference. Polar-opposite to other shows, our common ground would be having not seen it, having prepared ourselves in every way possible for the moment that we could. Prepared not to throw away our shot. (Boom!)

I mean, until now. Disney+ is as much of a shot as we’re going to get for the foreseeable future. And what a shot it is.

The stream of continuous motion, from the revolving rings of the stage to the subtle motions of the ensemble dancers; the alarmingly fluid light cues that spot each person as if they were born to be in that place in that moment; the almost uninterrupted music, treating applause and reactions practically like afterthoughts—every element of the production serves to evoke a life that was truly non-stop. (Boom!!! Goes the cannon!) The constant driving energy highlights the standstills even more starkly, like the unanticipated emotional rawness of “History Has Its Eyes On You” or the breathlessness of the…Philip thing.

And yet the energy comes across differently anyway; it’s a special kind of transference when it is transferred to one girl alone on a couch in her apartment (for example). In this instance there is an overwhelming feeling of intimacy, a request for the sole viewer to take away what she wishes to, what applies most to her. So, while the triumphant collective “Yorktown” and the tender twofold “Dear Theodosia” are certainly thrills, it feels summarily like the moment alone in the shade that Washington envisions in “One Last Time.” All of this is for you. The nation we’ve made is for you. Take a moment, or two hours and forty-five minutes, to survey it, to ponder it in all its beauty and imperfection.

That’s what spoke to me. Along, I should say, with everything else.

Among my favorite of the performers, nigh-on impossible with such a stellar cast: Renée Elise Goldsberry, because I love a singer who really opens her mouth; Daveed Diggs, who not only raps circles around everyone else but struts circles around them too; Anthony Ramos, the most convincing nine-year-old-who-is-not-nine that I’ve ever seen; Oak Onaodowan, who goes from Tough (as Hercules Mulligan) to Stuff (as in “stuffed shirt” James Madison) with ease; and the ensemble member who plays The Bullet as well as a host of other fatal premonitions–she’s everywhere if you keep an eye out for her.

Oh, and Leslie Odom Jr.? I think I’m in love with that guy. Not in any practical sense, of course; but longtime readers will know that I have a weakness for singers who clearly exhibit effort, and the terrifically demanding role of Aaron Burr will occasionally leave him expanding and contracting like a balloon. A balloon of talent. That’s Leslie.

After all this, the Auteur himself comes across as the weak link, if only because he is surrounded by highly trained Broadway performers. Still, the material is his brainchild; he knows it better than anyone, and he uses it to his advantage.

Some other observations from my two-hour-forty-five-minute epiphany:

  • Lots more equine talk than I remember. Hamilton writes to Congress about a starved Continental Army having “resorted to eating [their] horses.” Lafayette is famously “taking this horse by the reins.” And Hercules Mulligan warns “lock up your daughters and horses”—does that mean…is he…? You know what, let’s stop that Pony Express of thought right there.
  • Nowhere is the revolving stage more effective than in “Ten Duel Commandments.” Well, almost nowhere. Anytime a duel is involved, really.
  • Maybe there doesn’t need to be so much hopping up onto wooden blocks…
  • I need to figure out how I feel about tenor belts. I’m not crazy about belting in general as a vocal technique. Even so, there’s no denying Jonathan Groff knows how to do it.
  • King George is the piragua guy of this show. In and out a few times, a potential show-stealer if he plays his cards right. I do remember that character being my favorite part of In the Heights, so.
  • All right, the women in “Non-Stop”…whoop, there goes Angelica, just rolling away…and here comes Eliza…what a stage, just watch them go
  • I would have had Jefferson make his entrance during the instrumental break in “What’d I Miss” just before his vocal entrance, but that’s just me. I’m sure Thomas Kail (director) had his reasons.
  • Aw, I wanted a bed in “Say No to This”! Let’s get sexy!!! (whatever, the song is pretty sexy as is)
  • I wonder how many times those “Room Where It Happens” dancers accidentally kicked Leslie in the face. He’s looking all right, so I suppose not many.
  • Lin wearing glasses looks like a Puerto Rican Benjamin Franklin. I was waiting for him to show up in all this.
  • Somehow there’s more sitting down than I expected (the opposite of 1776). I guess I figured the energy of the music would keep everyone on their feet the whole time. But then I guess they might pass out.

Grand total: a spectacle so complete it’s sickening. The score is hard to beat, hard even to find fault with. It really knocks you off your feet. And, with today being the anniversary of the little duelio in Weehawken, there’s no time like the present to immerse yourself in it.

Don’t say no to this. I couldn’t if I tried. In fact, a second watch will be in order very soon.

Image: Lin & Chris; more where that came from